WE USED TO MAKE THEM, BUT DECIDED IT WAS SMARTER TO OUTSOURCE THAT TO OUR LIKELY GEOPOLITICAL ENEMIES: America’s War Machine Runs on Rare-Earth Magnets. China Owns That Market.

The American war machine depends on tiny bits of metal, some as small as dimes. Rare-earth magnets are needed for F-35 jet fighters, missile-guidance systems, Predator drones and nuclear submarines.

The problem: China makes most of the world’s rare-earth magnets, with 92% of the global market share.

Now, Washington is doling out hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and tax credits to revive magnet-making in America. Defense manufacturers are on a clock.

A U.S. law in 2018 restricted the use of made-in-China magnets in American military equipment, shriveling the list of potential suppliers to a small number in Japan and the West. By 2027, the curbs will extend to magnets made anywhere that contain materials mined or processed in China, covering nearly all of the current global supply.

After three decades of post-Cold War deindustrialization, rebuilding the industry—against China’s market heft—is an uphill battle, even with government help. Only one company in the U.S. is in production of the dominant type of rare-earth magnet.

“We’re not going to be able to simply flip a switch and get to where we want to be,” said Anthony Di Stasio, a senior U.S. defense official. “The only thing that you can really judge success on right now is how many positive ripples have you made from throwing the rock into the lake.”

The office Di Stasio runs in the Defense Department is diving into supply chains to invest in the pieces and parts that make the military work. Much of what they invest in is processing minerals and making metals, betting that regardless of how, for example, submarine technology evolves, the same building blocks will be needed.

Plus: “In the West, mines and processing facilities face more regulations. There are only a small number of experts left in the field, requiring pricey workarounds such as importing foreign talent, sending Americans abroad for training and automating.”

ROGER KIMBALL: From Idealism to Irresponsibility: Comparing College Protests Then and Now.

One apparently striking difference is the strong current of anti-Semitism. It is ubiquitous now; it was not a factor in the protests of the 1960s and 1970s.

But that difference distracts us from a deeper similarity between the two.  Fueling the anti-Semitism is a profound anti-American and anti-Western animus. Although shot through with radical Islamic verbiage, the overarching ideology is essentially Marxist in aim and origin.  The assaults on campus are not so much political as a snarling repudiation of the political in favor of something more atavistic. As Jean-François Revel noted in The Totalitarian Temptation (1977), such an upsurge is “not simply a new political orientation. It works through the depths of society. It writes the play in which political leaders will act much later.”

Providing a full anatomy of this phenomenon would take a book, or several books.  But as we ponder the emergence of “Gaza Solidarity Encampments” on the quads of our most exclusive universities, it may be useful to note a few things that today’s protestors have in common with their predecessors.

One of the most conspicuous, and conspicuously jejune, features of America’s cultural revolution has been the union of hedonism with a species of radical (or radical-chic) politics. This union fostered a situation in which, as the famous slogan put it, “the personal is the political.” The politics in question was seldom more than a congery of radical clichés, serious only in that it helped to disrupt society and blight a good many lives. In that sense, to be sure, it proved to be very serious indeed.

Our new revolutionaries, like the college revolutionaries of yore, exhibit that most common of bourgeois passions, anti-bourgeois animus—expressed, as always, safely within the swaddling clothes of bourgeois security.  Typical was the spectacle of that Columbia Ph.D. candidate who, having helped smash into and occupy a major college classroom building, stood before microphones, keffiyeh in place, to demand that the university feed the occupiers.  As Allan Bloom remarked in The Closing of the American Mind (1987), the cultural revolution proved to be so successful on college campuses partly because of “the bourgeois’ need to feel that he is not bourgeois, to have dangerous experiments with the unlimited. . . .Anti-bourgeois ire is the opiate of the Last Man.”  It almost goes without saying that, like all narcotics, the opiate of anti-bourgeois ire was both addictive and debilitating.

Like Falstaff’s dishonesty, the adolescent quality of these developments was “gross as a mountain, open, palpable.” Looking at the pampered multitudes agitating on campus, one is reminded that now, as in the 1960s, the actions of the protestors were at bottom an attack on maturity; more, they was a glorification of immaturity. As the Yippie leader Jerry Rubin put it, “We’re permanent adolescents.”

And the song remains the same: ‘Violent’ leader of Columbia University’s anti-Israel protest is unmasked as 4o-year old son of millionaire ad execs who is married to a model and lives in $3.4M Brooklyn brownstone.

READER FAVORITE: 5-Minute Core Exercises for Seniors: Daily Routines to Build Balance and Boost Confidence. #CommissonEarned

THE POLITICO VISITS RICK’S CAFÉ, IS SHOCKED TO DISCOVER GAMBLING GOING ON THERE: Pro-Palestianian protesters are backed by a surprising source: Biden’s biggest donors.

President Joe Biden has been dogged for months by pro-Palestinian protesters calling him “Genocide Joe” — but some of the groups behind the demonstrations receive financial backing from philanthropists pushing hard for his reelection.

The donors include some of the biggest names in Democratic circles: Gates, Soros, Rockefeller and Pritzker, according to a POLITICO analysis.

Two of the main organizers behind protests at Columbia University and on other campuses are Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Both are supported by the Tides Foundation, which is seeded by Democratic megadonor George Soros as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and it in turn supports numerous small nonprofits that work for social change. (Gates did not return a request for comment, and Soros declined to comment.)

Another notable Democratic donor whose philanthropy has helped fund the protest movement is David Rockefeller Jr., who sits on the board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In 2022, the fund gave $300,000 to the Tides Foundation; according to nonprofit tax forms, Tides has given nearly $500,000 over the past five years to Jewish Voice for Peace, which explicitly describes itself as anti-Zionist.

Several other groups involved in pro-Palestinian protests are backed by a foundation funded by Susan and Nick Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt Hotel empire — and supporters of Biden and numerous Democratic campaigns, including $6,600 to the Biden Victory Fund a few months ago and more than $300,000 during the 2020 campaign.

Why is the establishment left such a cesspit of antisemitism?

THE LEFT NEVER FACED THIS KIND OF CAMPUS OPPOSITION BEFORE: Dueling pro-Palestinian, pro-Israel demonstrations hit Clemson.

SCREAMING CAMPUS GARBAGE BABIES LIVING UP TO THEIR NAME: TRASH: Humboldt campus occupiers left 8,000 LBS of debris, university says. I remember when Tea Party protesters left sites cleaner than they found them, and the press and our national deep thinkers called them barbarians.

A CINCO DE MAYO FLASHBACK TO A SIMPLER, MORE INNOCENT TIME:

Happy Cinco de Mayo! pic.twitter.com/QWCFHnsAKt

— Media Research Center (@theMRC) May 5, 2024

ROGER KIMBALL: From Idealism to Irresponsibility: Comparing College Protests Then and Now. “Like every major college protest since the 1960s, the pro-Palestinian—which is to say, the anti-Israel—protests sweeping college campuses today have early and often been compared with the protests of that annus horribilis, 1968. There are plenty of similarities but also plenty of differences. History repeats itself as student and faculty protestors align themselves with the totalitarians. Then it was the Viet Cong, Mao, and the Khmer Rouge. Today it is the Sunni Muslim terrorist group Hamas, the main puppet master of the “pro-Palestinian” agitators. One apparently striking difference is the strong current of anti-Semitism. It is ubiquitous now; it was not a factor in the protests of the 1960s and 1970s.”

CONSEQUENCES: Hagerty joins chorus of GOP senators stoking efforts to cut funding from universities hosting protests. “Hagerty appeared Saturday on Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street to react to reports that 2,000 college students were arrested on campuses in their pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Some were charged with misdemeanors such as trespassing, while others stand accused of assaulting police officers. Videos have come out from some of these protesters revealing antisemitic themes in their chants and signage.”

The problem isn’t these protests in particular, it’s the higher education sector in general, as an incubator of toxic ideas and hatred.

THEY HAVE TO SCOTCH THIS STUFF, IT’S HURTING DEMOCRATS: Wash U Law Faculty, Students, And Alumni Condemn Protest Crackdown.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Anti-Israel Georgetown Professor Dubs US Congressman a ‘Race Traitor’ and ‘Uncle Tom:’ Zein El-Amine has long history of supporting Students for Justice in Palestine, which is leading anti-Israel campus protests.

IT’S WHO THEY ARE, IT’S WHAT THEY DO: The CDC is already mismanaging H5N1: The implications for the virus and the potential government response are vast and concerning.

After the way they blew it on Covid, it’s likely no one will listen to them anyway, so there’s that.

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COULDN’T HAPPEN TO A NICER BUNCH: ‘Ozempic Face’ Destroying the Hollywood Beautiful People?

WELL, YES: Activist Groups Trained Students for Months Before Campus Protests: Left-wing groups and veteran demonstrators provided guidance and support before rise of pro-Palestinian encampments.

For the last decade, donations to NSJP have been received and administered by the Wespac Foundation, according to Howard Horowitz, Wespac’s board chairman. The donations are passed on to NSJP “for projects in the United States,” he said, declining to provide further details.

Wespac, a nonprofit based in Westchester County near New York City, is decades old, according to its website. It has supported humanitarian causes, as well as organizations that propagate antisemitism, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Wespac has posted support of pro-Palestinian protests on social media and posted videos in which protesters held signs that refer to President Biden as “Genocide Joe.” . . .

“There is nothing wrong with being a member of Hamas, being a leader of Hamas, being a fighter in Hamas,” Kates said. “These are the people that are on the front lines defending Palestine.”

Samidoun didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment. The German government banned the group last November after saying it supported terrorism and antisemitism, and incited the use of violence to enforce political interests.

This is just the surface.

BUT BUT BUT…. I THOUGHT THEY WERE ANTI-FASCIST:  U. Wisconsin Anti-Israel Protesters Chant ‘Heil Hitler’ at Jewish Students.

OPEN THREAD: Light this candle.

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IT’S HOW THE MACHINE WORKS: Thoughts on Selective Law Enforcement. “You have a right to free speech, but that doesn’t give you a First Amendment right to camp out on my lawn with protest signs. That’s trespassing. But government officials sometimes allow trespassing when they sympathize with the trespasser’s viewpoint. Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC have refused to remove progressive anti-Israel protesters camping out at private universities — Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and George Washington University.”

This should give rise to civil rights lawsuits. Plus:

As a University of Pennsylvania alumnus notes, these illegal protests are only being allowed by progressive officials because of the viewpoint they are expressing. If the protesters were “white nationalists waving nazi flags and telling black people they should go back to Africa I’m sure [police] would be out there pretty quickly” to remove them. . . . This favoritism by progressive cities violates the First Amendment. According to the Supreme Court, the government cannot favor certain kinds of protests over others.

But that’s how the left rolls: “For my friends, everything. For my enemies: The law.”

Plus: “From what I can gather, the problem in cities is usually not that the police department itself is unwilling to assist, but that they are under orders from the mayor, afraid of upsetting far left constituents, to stand down. This is going a bit beyond my expertise, but from what I understand the Justice Department could and should, but won’t under the Biden administration, investigate whether these police departments are violating the terms of their federal funding, and also denying equal protection of the law, by refusing to enforce the law for ideological and political reasons. An added factor is that this lack of enforcement is to the specific detriment of Jewish students who have disproportionately faced threats, intimidation, and violence from people at the encampments.”

SO IN PROSECUTING TRUMP FOR MISHANDLING CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS, THE PROSECUTORS MISHANDLED THE CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: Prosecutors: Docs in boxes seized from Mar-a-Lago were inadvertently jumbled. “Special counsel Jack Smith’s team acknowledged Friday that some evidence in the prosecution of former President Donald Trump for hoarding classified documents at his Florida home may not be in the same sequence FBI agents found it when they swept into the Mar-a-Lago compound with a search warrant in August 2022. The concession from prosecutors in a court filing Friday afternoon came after attorneys for one of Trump’s co-defendants asked for a delay in the case because the defense lawyers were having trouble determining precisely where particular documents had come from in the 33 boxes the FBI seized almost two years ago. In their filing, prosecutors acknowledged the government had previously — and incorrectly — told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that the boxes remained ‘in their original, intact form as seized,’ other than a decision to replace classified documents with placeholder sheets.”

YOU DON’T WANT TO BE STUCK WITH AN OBSOLETE PLATFORM: Experts Discuss The Dark Likelihood of ‘Abandoned’ Brain Implant Technology.

THIS SHOULD MAKE TERRAFORMING EASIER: NASA’s Curiosity Rover Uncovers Signs of an Earth-Like Environment on Ancient Mars.

IT’S LIKE JURASSIC PARK FOR BIRDS: What happened when scientists taught parrots to video chat?

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OF SORTS: Tested: 2023 Mercedes-Maybach S680 4Matic Is a Bargain of Sorts.